Every Vote Counts... and Is Counted? 'Unless the U.S. radically changes the way we send, receive, and count mail-in ballots, a massive switch to postal voting...could lead to the true will of the electorate being nullified.'.

AuthorPalast, Greg

I GET IT--we must vote by mail, or we could die from COVID-19. There really is no other safe choice. There is, however, much to fear, especially for minority and young voters, with a switch to all-mail voting-unless our broken absentee ballot system is fixed.

Here is what the "go postal" crowd does not tell you: in 2016, 512,696 mail-in ballots were rejected ...not counted. That is official, from the Federal Elections Assistance Commission, but that is just the tip of the ballotberg of uncounted mail-in votes.

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology puts the total loss of mail-in votes at 22%. Move to 80% mail-in voting and 25,000,000 will lose their vote--and not just anyone's mail-in ballots are dumped in the electoral trash can. Overwhelmingly, those junked are ballots mailed by poorer, younger, nonwhite Americans.

Barbara Amwine, professor of law at Columbia University and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, says that a move to mail-in voting is "really, really dangerous to the black vote." Millions of low-income voters who rarely vote absentee now will have to fill out multi-step fo[pi]ns for the first time, which "will lead to disaster."

Vote by mail is not as simple as "pick and lick." Eight states--including the swing states of Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Minnesota--require mail-in voters to have the ballot signed by a witness. The required double-verification is a nightmare--it requires breaking the lockdown--and is an invitation to ballot challenges.

Three states, including swing state Missouri, require the ballot to be notarized. (Alabama requires a notary or two witnesses.) All but six states "verify" your signature against your registration signature. Partisan officials decide if there is a "match." No less than 141.000 ballots were rejected as "unmatched" in 2016. Why?--to prevent voter fraud; someone stealing your ballot and voting in your name. Pres. Donald Trump warns, "Mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters."

Dangerous, yes, but not because of Trump's imagined "cheaters." For instance, Lorraine Minnite, professor of political science and associate professor of public policy at Rutgers University, found just six verified cases of voter impersonation over 12 years of voting nationwide. The Election Law Journal maintains that "the proportion of the population reporting voter impersonation is indistinguishable from that reporting abduction by extraterrestrials."

The...

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